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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: DENVERMarch 17, 2016Rodney TerryJulien LewisMarvelle HarrisDenver, Colorado Utah - 80, Fresno State - 69 THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Fresno State. Coach, give your thoughts on today's game. COACH TERRY: Well, one, I'd like to congratulate a really good Utah team. Thought they came out and played the way they played down the stretch and showed how they were able to finish second place in the PAC-12. They competed at a very high level. We give them a lot of credit for doing what they did today. THE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions for the student-athlete. Q. Marvelle, could you talk about the 10-0 run you had in the middle of the second half. MARVELLE HARRIS: We just got back to playing the way we're used to playing. We started off slow in the first half. We knew in order to stay in the game, we had to make a run. I think we came in the huddle, we got together, we discussed what we were going to do. I think coming out we did a great job. Q. Julien, how hard was their size to deal with? JULIEN LEWIS: It was a lot because, you know, they have length out there. It reminds me of the team we played this last week, San Diego State, with the length they have, a seven-foot guy in the middle of paint. It bothered us a little bit, but we still knew how to attack the zone they was in, the matchup zone they was trying to play. A man-to-man it looked like. Overall I give my hats off to Utah. They played very well. They knew how to come out and guard us and we knew how to compete. Q. After you made that run, you made a shot to give the Bulldogs the lead, did that use up your energy? I sensed a bit of a lull after that. JULIEN LEWIS: Well, yeah, we fought back through the adversity we came back from. We was down 11. We got the lead down to I think like one. Then we took the lead. They did a great job making us try to guard the ball screens. That take a lot of energy out of you when you have to go out there every single time coming down. But we fought like we supposed to. Q. How hard was it to keep Utah's seven-foot center off the boards? MARVELLE HARRIS: It was tough. He's a great player. We knew it was going to be a challenge for us. We knew trying to jump up and use athleticism wasn't going to be enough against him. You have to put a body on him. It was a tough matchup for us, yeah. Q. Coach, what was the halftime strategy? COACH TERRY: We wanted to get back to playing Bulldog basketball in the first half. We weren't making great decisions. Again, we give them credit in terms of how they played defensively. We didn't play our best basketball the first half in terms of open-court play. Didn't do a great job of keeping them off the glass. The big fella had seven offensive rebounds in the first half alone. We were getting smashed on the glass pretty hard. The thought in the second half was to come out, try to control the boards a little bit better, set down and guard, get our defense set, do a good job trying to attack on our terms offensively. I thought our guys came out, got in a pretty good rhythm offensively, started executing, making good decisions, then we started making shots. We put ourselves in position to win this ballgame. Q. With the first half, with your bigs, were you trying to muscle up against Utah? COACH TERRY: Well, I mean, I don't know if you necessarily can muscle up. The big fellow's had a chance to grow up a whole 'nother year. I thought our process was not let him get deep post where he's most effective. If he did, we were going to come in with a baseline trap and defend. We have to go back and look at the tape, but I thought our rotation was pretty good. What we didn't do a very good job of in the first half was blocking out. We had some pretty good possessions. We didn't finish possessions. Q. Marvelle, you have seen this program grow over your career. How would you sum it up finishing at 25-10 with an appearance in the NCAA tournament from where you started? MARVELLE HARRIS: It's great. We came a long way. We didn't just want to make the tournament, we wanted to win, of course. But we came a long way. I'm proud of the program, players, coaches, community. We showed a lot of grit and toughness this season. Q. I know it's tough now, but talk about being the senior class, graduation rate, what Coach Terry has done, what he's meant to you athletically and academically as well. JULIEN LEWIS: I know he pushes a lot on and off the court, regardless of what we go through. If we having a bad time on the court, he still pushes us to go to class every day, do study hall, do all the right things to be a man. He helped me grow up as a man. Laid the fundamentals down to me when I become a father, have kids or something, know how to teach them the right ways, make the right choices out here. That's what he always preached to us every day after practice. He give us a speech to make the right choices when we going home or anything. MARVELLE HARRIS: Yeah, he's a great role model for us, teaches us to do everything the right way, no shortcuts, be a man about everything. Just a great person. Somebody you can look up. Somebody you know you can call in the future. He's always going to have your back, somebody that's going to go to war for you. We appreciate everything coach done for us. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student-athletes at this time. Thank you, gentlemen. We'll continue with questions for Coach Terry. Q. One thing you did during your run was limit turnovers. Eight was the most you had in recent games. You had 14 tonight. Was that carelessness on your part or was it Utah playing excellent defense? COACH TERRY: Well, I thought in the first half, again, that's where we had the majority of those turnovers. We didn't make decisive plays, we didn't make good decision-making plays in the first half. We've been better in transition making simple plays. Tonight we didn't do a great job at the start of the ballgame. I thought we were much, much better in the second half. As a direct result of that, we had a ballgame with seven minutes to go. So I thought our guys, we went in the half, said the things we're having problems with right now we can fix. We can fix blocking out, put a body on guys and be more physical with our blockouts because they're killing us on the glass. Let's play and execute the things we call and do them at a high level. I thought we did those things in the second half. Q. You seemed to do a pretty good job on Jakob. He only had 11 attempts. At the end of the night he had 16 points. Was it his imposing his will and being a force? COACH TERRY: The thing, he puts a lot of pressure on you. Anytime you have a post presence like that, it helps his perimeter players. Those guys, I don't know how many threes they made tonight total at the end. He does a great job not only for himself, but he creates for his teammates. You have to have so much attention to him, where he creates opportunities for guys to make shots. Give them credit, they made big threes. He passed the ball out of the double-team when we were trying to come over. Those guys, they made shots tonight. They were seven for 18. I think that's the biggest thing. He puts a lot of pressure on you in that regard to where they play inside-out and you have to deal with him inside. He's gotten stronger. It's difficult to guard him one-on-one in the post. Q. You haven't obviously had a ton of time to think about it. To go from pre-season polls, winning nine straight coming into tonight, how would you encapsulate the seasons for Fresno State? COACH TERRY: I'm proud of this group. We had a lot of adversity we fought through throughout the course of the season, whether it was injuries, whether we had guys that we had to take off the floor for whatever reason. We continued to battle. We continued to improve. More importantly our guys really played for each other. Didn't play for themselves. That's the thing I'm most proud of. We didn't have a selfish thing. We had a team that was about winning, about the tomorrow. They really enjoyed being around each other. That's the thing, again, when they have the chance to reflect back over the years, they'll take a lot of pride. We were really a team, we enjoyed being around each other. We were able to accomplish things that haven't been accomplished at Fresno in a long time. We went down and won in New Mexico and won in the Pit. That's a big deal. That's a big deal for us because our program has never done that before. We beat San Diego State twice in one season. So we made a lot of positive things throughout the course of the season happen for us. But more importantly I think this group became a team. Q. The graduation rate, outstanding for you. COACH TERRY: As much as we want to win games, I want those guys to win in the game of life. I think they're well on their way in terms of some of the adversity they fought throughout the course of their careers. Every guy says I know they've been there in five years that have been in position to graduate have all graduated. We put a high emphasis on guys getting their degrees. A lot of times for guys and their families, it's the first time that someone from their family has had a chance to graduate. We place a high emphasis on academics and we want our guys to get their degrees. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. COACH TERRY: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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